


Ember

by cykelops



Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Multi, Nudity, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:34:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24783934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cykelops/pseuds/cykelops
Summary: After a long day, Jean seeks to bring everything back into focus.
Relationships: Jean Grey/Ororo Munroe, Jean Grey/Scott Summers, Ororo Munroe/Scott Summers
Comments: 3
Kudos: 20





	Ember

**Author's Note:**

> a little ficlet i felt like writing. be kind

At the center of the Crystal Palace, where the angular walls rise short of meeting and let in the sky, is the Moon. 

The Moon is a circular pool below ground level, surrounded by iridescent stairs that gleam multicolor like oil and pearls and a shell-shaped lift. Every night its namesake peers through the opening overhead and breaks against the glass to light the room. Sometimes Jean is there to see it, other times she peers out the window of her Summer House and pretends she is seen. 

Jean faces the left wall and begins to undress. She places her mask on a stand, runs her fingers through the halo of hair that sits behind it, stiffened by product, and wills it soft again. Her belt goes on the rack, her gloves on the flat counter, she strips off her dress before her boots and smiles at the ridiculousness of standing there in her underwear with her shoes on. Around her the glass is a mix of clear and frosted, the abstract shapes split her body into pieces to adorn the otherwise bare walls. There are few private spaces in Krakoa, but most people either do not know about the Moon or have little reason to visit it. There are a thousand other pools in the island, and the sky is always clear enough for stargazing elsewhere.

She leaves the rest of her clothes and turns. There were two other uniforms in the spaces beside her's and two figures in the pool. Near the center where the water reaches Ororo's belly and Scott's hips, they stand across each other. Scott holds a washcloth to Ororo's eyes. It glitters, stained with makeup. A larger towel drapes over one of his shoulders.

Jean descends the slick stairs carefully using the handrail. The water is thick with the scent of soap and flowers, but clear all the way to the mosaic floor. It barely ripples as it welcomes her body and her presence does not disturb the quiet conversation already in place. 

"She doesn't sleep." Scott whispers to Ororo. His hand floats on the surface of the water, cloth hanging from his grip. His eyes are focused on the undulating fabric whenever they're not seeking out Ororo's face. "I'm asking because you aren't sleeping either."

"I can't talk about it any more than she can." Ororo says, taking his floating hand between her's and squeezing. There are small petals caught between their fingers. Scott folds his free hand over them. 

"You would tell me if it was life or death, though? If you needed my help?" 

"Loving her helps, Scott." Ororo assures him. 

There is a strategic pause on Scott's part where he looks at their joined hands and decides whether or not there is a question he can ask. 

"And you? Can I help you?" He decides. 

Jean is too close now for such intimate conversation. They look up at her with twin relief on their faces. Their hands fall through the water slowly and separate only in the darkness of the pool. Ororo's coiled hair is wet, white and glorious like a caught moonbeam. Scott's brown curls dry against his forehead. Both of them are as naked as she is. Jean's eyes linger on her best friend before passing onto her husband. 

"Emma's ready for you." She relays. He looks at the watch missing from his wrist and color rises to his cheeks. He gives Jean a nervous nod and passes her the washcloth. She turns his head to the side and wipes away a smear of black lipstick on his jawline. Scott smiles gratefully and lays the towel on his shoulder around her neck like a garland, reigning her closer to plant a teasingly overmoist kiss over one eyelid. She shoves her husband towards the stairs with her hip and he pauses long enough to find Ororo's hand again and kiss her knuckles goodbye over Jean's head.

They don't watch him leave. Every moment now comes with the promise of seeing each other again.

Jean touches her own jaw. "Is that something I need to update the kids on?" She teases. 

Ororo laughs, but there is a note of sadness in the sweet noise. She lowers herself into the water and takes a deep breath so her body won't sink. There is an answer in her silence. Though Jean struggles to make sense of it, Scott and Ororo have spent the better part of the last decade hurting each other. Krakoa has a gift for muddying the past, but the two of them have always been in possession of a painful clarity when something's too good to be true. Jean lays on the surface beside her and lets the Moon suspend her body, weightless. They join hands, one pinky crossed over the other, and feel as secure as otters do in the river. Where the towel floats, where the washcloth drifts, it matters not. 

"Am I a hypocrite if I can sit across Sinister and Apocalypse and feel little, but struggle to find unflinching comfort in the arms of someone I love?" Ororo asks through the water sloshing in Jean's ear. The words are half spoken aloud, half projected inside her head. 

"Sinister and Apocalypse never promised you anything." Jean tells her telepathically, as her voice might not carry across the water. "Friendship is a promise. Love is a promise."

"I want to forget and start over— but I don't. There would be nothing to stop us from making the same mistakes over and over if we did." Ororo's finger curls tighter around Jean's. "And yet, if we continue to ask the same questions, hold the same anger, is there any way forward?"

"I don't know." Jean applies telekinetic pressure to their lower backs and against their shoulder blades for extra buoyancy as she raises their hands over their heads, framed by the moonlit hole in the ceiling. "You're not wrong to doubt. When I'm at that table with the rest, sometimes your face is the only thing capable of convincing me I'm not in the wrong room."

"And should my doubts be called treason?" Ororo asks, like a question and a test all at once, because this is not really a conversation about Scott.

"Against who? Against Krakoa, against Charles?" Jean shakes her head despite the soap-sting it brings to her eyes. "Your loyalty lies with the kids, the future of mutantkind, and mine lies with you."

Ororo bends forward and trusts Jean to hold her body above water. She draws her knees up to her bare chest and crosses her wrists over her ankles with a sigh.

"There are actions beyond forgiveness. Are there people?" 

Jean sits up and slicks her wet hair back over her shoulders. She lets their bodies fall into the warm water enough to ward off the chill of the room, until curls of white and red spread like thread between them. Jean is inside her head. Ororo has the answers to every question she asks. She is capable of great empathy and great mercy. That she hesitates enough to wonder is a sign of restraint— but she knows.

"What do you want to do?" Jean asks, closing herself off to Ororo's private thoughts so she might hear her voice again.

"I think Sabretooth is lonely." Ororo's eyes are hard. Her lips press together, in distaste of the man and the subject. "I would give him deserving company." 

Jean thinks of her husband's broken body after Apocalypse took him. Her son, forever named after a vicious, manipulative murderer. Opportunist vultures perch over Krakoa and they will feed upon the first sign of rot. She closes her eyes and fights the image of Sebastian Shaw's fist connecting with the back of Ororo's head and her body hitting the floor as it develops like film in a darkroom. Ororo's hand splashes to grip Jean's thighs. Her nose comes to rest on Jean's cheek and the image changes. Ororo stands with dust ground beneath her heel, not unscathed but always victorious. If there is anything about their pasts to draw from is that it is not them who should be afraid.

Jean tilts her head enough to meet Ororo's lips. Ororo holds her face gingerly while she licks the remnants of her lipstick from her warm mouth. She is everything good about Krakoa. Righteous anger. Parental affection. Jean trusts her to know the difference between what is just and what is hubris. Jean wants this to work. Krakoa is home, it has the potential to change their lives forever, but should the already uncertain balance shift— 

A word from her and Jean would burn it all to the ground. 


End file.
